2 comments:

Countries never like being criticized from without. Trump does aim to highlight and sharpen divisions for political reasons - and the intemperate crassness with which he does it is part of what people react to of course. Not their kind of above it all, academic/upper middle class brand of propriety. As Democrats have absorbed most of the more socially liberal, affluent professionals, enmity toward Trump and his supporters is shot through with clear class revulsion.

Anyone who cares about real social democracy cannot but be a stalwart opponent of Trump. He is of course largely a charlatan and fake populist.And most of his appointees are doctrinaire pro-corporate right-wingers. Though as a life-long liberal Democrat, I am much closer to him on immigration and trade than where the Democrats have ended up. But "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is a real thing. In the past year, I've found that otherwise sensible, well-informed people with whom I share most political and policy views begin to resemble his mirror image and adopt all manner of hysterical, knee-jerk reactions - "because Trump".

Of course the other part of this extreme reaction abroad is because he is hitting a nerve. Apparently, look away, nothing to see here - you aren't racist are you? Is supposed to be the official and public response to crime by migrants who broke the law to arrive and whose incompatible cultural values and refusal to assimilate is enabled by official policy and treated as a core right by mainstream media. "Maybe some will be a bit more amenable to helping us re: serious crimes being committed with their communities, if we never scrutinize whether people committing crimes have a right to be here in the first place." Democrats in the US will not win many votes pushing the lawless insanity of Sanctuary Cities. Though some past accounts of "no-go zones" in Britain and W. Europe may have been exaggerated or pushed by unsavory characters. The only response I saw on the Democratic center-left was to dismiss the concept entirely as a complete fabrication. It's not hard to see how that kind of arrogant denialism has opened a lane for Trump and a number of other rightest (pseudo)populists.

A very insightful comment. Your position as a Democrat with reservations about mass immigration and free trade is interesting. In Australia, our Labor Party (analogous to your Democrats) maintained policies of restricted immigration and economic development through protection until the late 1960’s. Since then, however, Labor has embraced globalist neo-liberalism. This is most apparent in its approach to questions of ownership, immigration, trade policy, identity and ‘diversity’. Along the way, a number of us who formerly supported Labor have quit or been kicked out for voicing dissent. We are small in number and disorganised, but I suspect that a reasonable proportion of the voting public would agree with us on most important issues.

I wonder, is there any organisation of Democrat leaning folk like yourself in the US? Aside from this website and a few similar / related Facebook pages, I haven’t seen any mention of such groups. It’d be good to know, particularly since there is some appetite for something similar in Australia now.